Consumers differ considerably in the amount of sweetness that they prefer in foods and beverages. The amount of sweetness incorporated into a liquid during commercial production may not be adequate to satisfy some consumers while other consumers may find that the same amount of sweetness to be excessive. Therefore, there exists a long-felt need for mechanisms that consumers can use to increase the sweetness of a product at the time of consumption that is consistent with their personal preference, without introducing an additional caloric burden.
Methods for dispensing hydrophilic substances into a liquid are known. For example, adding sweetener to an unsweetened iced tea beverage will typically involve several steps—adding the sweetener to the unsweetened iced tea beverage followed by stirring to incorporate the sweetener to create a sweetened iced tea beverage. Such sweetener is typically in a powdered, liquid, or tablet form. Similar effort is undertaken when adding powdered or liquid beverage mix to a liquid, e.g., water, milk, alcohol, and the like.
The availability of high intensity sweeteners (HIS) provides novel technical routes to the delivery of sweeteners to individual servings of beverages. These new technical approaches are made possible by the minute quantities of these sweeteners needed to achieve adequate sweetening of individual servings. For example, sucralose is about 600 times as sweet as sucrose (table sugar or cane sugar). Therefore, one teaspoon of sugar (about 4 g) can be replaced by only about 6.7 mg of sucralose.
Although the very small quantities of high intensity sweeteners needed to sweeten individual servings of beverages offer new technical approaches, delivering this small amount of a sweetener to a disposable serving device also presents challenges. One common approach is the blending of the high intensity sweetener with non-sweet, bland materials, and then adhering these materials to a serving device. This introduces complexity in manufacture, and also introduces possibly unwanted caloric intake to the user's diet.
Sweetening individual servings of a beverage presents a challenge in many food service situations. Frequently, an individual packet of a sweetener is provided along with a serving of a beverage. The packet may contain sucrose, or alternatively may contain high intensity sweeteners such as sucralose, aspartame, or saccharin. The user must open the packet and empty the contents into the beverage, and then stir the beverage to obtain dissolution of the sweetener and its complete dispersion in the liquid mass. The residual packaging of the packet creates waste that may present disposal problems under many situations. Also, a device is needed to stir the liquid to which the sweetener has been added. This stirring device may be a reusable or disposable spoon. More frequently, especially in casual dining, convenience stores, or fast food situations a simpler stir stick is provided. This stick may be wooden, but more generally it is an extruded plastic object.
The multi-step process involved in satisfactorily adding a hydrophilic substance to a liquid has been addressed by many methods. Most of these methods combine a stirring device with the hydrophilic substance, e.g., sweetener, flavoring agent, coffee, cocoa, tea, and the like.
One such approach is directed to placing a free flowing hydrophilic substance inside a container having a receptacle for holding the substance. This approach is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,154,418; 4,860,929; 4,986,451; 5,125,534; 5,440,976; and 5,866,185.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,154,418, which is expressly incorporated herein by reference, discloses, among other things, a spoon having two cavities. One cavity is covered by a mesh and is used to contain a material, such as, tea, coffee, or cocoa for making a beverage. A second cavity was purported to be in a handle of the spoon. This second cavity is used to deliver beverage components, such as, sweetener. Delivery of material from the second chamber is achieved by squeezing the spoon handle or shaft of the stir stick, thereby breaking a seal and permitting the contents to flow into the beverage by gravity.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,824,322, which is expressly incorporated herein by reference, discloses a flavored tubular stirrer for alcoholic beverages. The disclosed stirrer was described as having stirring and handle portions, and flavoring means for aqueous alcoholic beverages that is held to a stirring portion of the stirrer with at least part of the flavoring communicable with an alcoholic beverage in which it is placed through or at an exterior surface of the stirring portion. The flavoring means were described as being a natural extract, a solid, or be capable of being converted to solid form by being deposited on or sorbed by a carrier. The carrier was described as being a sugar, sorbitol, manitol, corn syrup solids, milk solids, monoglycerides or diglycerides, and the like. In addition, the perforations were disclosed as being pushed inwardly so as to provide projections to assist in holding the flavoring means in place therein.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,860,929 and 4,986,451, which are expressly incorporated herein by reference, allegedly disclose a dispensing device for soluble granular material. The device includes a tube containing a solid granular material. The tube being closed at both ends and having perforations along a portion of its length and having a paddle formed at one end. In this design and in the dry state, the granular material must be sized so as not to escape through the perforations while the granular material is in a dry state.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,125,534, which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses a multiple compartment dispenser that is capable of simultaneously dispensing multiple dry flavoring ingredients into a fluid. The dispenser described contains a chamber having a spine with a plurality of vanes or blades projecting therefrom that extend into a lower housing to form multiple compartments. The lower housing was described as being a dissolvable film, such as, gelatin or methylcellulose, that is formed to fit over the bottom portion of the spine and the associated horizontally projecting vanes. Each of the multiple compartments was described as being individually filled with a flavoring ingredient prior to dispensing. Flavoring ingredients included sugar, coffee, hot chocolate, and bouillon.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,440,976, which is incorporated herein by reference, allegedly discloses a device for dispensing natural and artificial sweeteners into a beverage. The device includes a tube having perforations and at least one separator disk positioned therein, and a solid sleeve formed to receive the tube. The tube is in the sleeve such that the tube may be urged forward dispensing a measured amount of sweetener into the beverage. Control of sweetness intensity was allegedly described as being further enhanced by providing calibration markers on the surface of the tube.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,866,185, which is expressly incorporated herein by reference, discloses a device including a tube including a soluble or dispersible material and a soluble coating formed on the outer surface of the tubular portion. The soluble coating can be sugar or an artificial sweetener and is dissolved when the coating comes into contact with liquid. The tube is also disclosed as having perforations to control the rate that the soluble material is dispersed in the liquid. The soluble material was described as being a variety of substances that are soluble in liquid, including flavors, such as, cherry, orange, grape, and fruit punch.
Another approach is directed to attaching a solid mass to a handle and dissolving the solid mass in a liquid. This approach is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,869,555; 4,849,231; 6,399,126, and U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 20010038871.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,869, 555, which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses a soluble solid mass secured to a wooden stick. The solid mass was discloses as having a base mass and an optional flavoring mass. The base mass was described as being instant coffee crystals or particles, tea, cocoa, eggnog, and chocolate with binder material. The flavoring mass was described as being powdered milk and/or sugar that is held together by a binder material, which could be sugar or may be taste-free.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,849,231, which is expressly incorporated herein by reference, discloses a stirring rod having a stirring body that has a holder for holding a solid mass, e.g., sugar lump. More than one holder can be included in the body of the stirring rod. In addition to sugar lumps, sweetener tablets containing high intensity sweeteners, such as, aspartame or saccharin, powdered milk, coloring, and flavoring are disclosed. In another embodiment, there is disclosed a wooden stirring body that was immersed in a warm, liquid sugar or other substance, where a quantity of substance has remained adhered thereto, the quantity corresponding to a quantity of substance, for example sugar or sweetener, e.g,, aspartame, geared to an amount of beverage. After cooling, the solid piece of the substance is held by a holder. The quantity of substance to be added to the beverage was disclosed as being regulated by inserting the stirring rod more or less deeply into the beverage that is to be stirred.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,399,126, which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses a flavored beverage stirrer that includes a carrier and a cartridge. The cartridge was disclosed as being formed from a flavored material, which dissolves and adds flavor to a beverage.
U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 20010038871, which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses an embodiment wherein a predetermined quantity of a water soluble extract is sprayed onto the inner surface of a straw. The coated-interior of the straw will provide an agent of choice to be incorporated into a liquid.
The above approaches suffer from a number of drawbacks. In particular, due to the complexity of most of the above solutions, manufacturing costs and difficulties present obstacles to adoption. In addition, none of the solutions address the problem of increasing the dissolution rate of a hydrophilic substance while maintaining the same compact size of the device.